stressed
bunnysworldTitle: Parentproof
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): Merlin/Arthur
Warnings: none
Word Count: 649
Prompt: haste
Summary: Merlin runs about to make the place halfways presentable as their parents announced themselves on short notice
Notes: Sorry, once again not beta’d.
“Merlin!“
Merlin ran past Arthur with some laundry in his arms.
“Merlin, stop it!”
Tossing the shirts and jeans in the general direction of the bed, Merlin closed the bedroom door behind him. “I can’t.”
For a moment, Arthur watched as Merlin collected books from the coffee table only to stuff them into a shelf, almost tripping over the hoover that was waiting in the middle of the room in his haste to get to the other side of the room, folded the ironing board and put it away, grabbed some things from the dining table and looked around with wild eyes.
“Merlin, come here.” Arthur stepped into his path.
“I need to…”
“No!”
“But Arthur!”
“Merlin!” Arthur grabbed Merlin by his shoulders. “Calm down!”
“How can I? I didn’t know that our parents would show up here tonight without any warning!”
“They called an hour ago, this is hardly ‘without any warning’.” Arthur felt Merlin tremble.
“Still, you know what the place looked like. We need to make it parent-save!” Merlin tried to get out of Arthur’s hold.
“They know we’ve both been working mad hours in the past weeks and months and we took a little time-out over the weekend and only came back last night.”
“Your father won’t understand.”
“No, but even if we had a cleaning lady, he wouldn’t approve of the quality of her work, so it doesn’t matter.”
“And mam will try to start cleaning. I don’t want her to do that!”
“I know and I’ll do my best to charm her socks off so she doesn’t even get the idea to get up off that couch and search for cleaning utensils.”
“And what are we going to do about dinner? The restaurant didn’t call back if they will make it on time and your father will not like it and mam will push some recipes on me in that tone of voice.”
Arthur knew the tone too well. The tone that disguised a ‘you don’t even know what you’re doing’ with a sweet ‘here, let me give you some guidance’ and that suffocated Merlin sometimes. “I’ll explain to her that I had to get you out of a meeting to make it here on time and that there was no time for cooking.” He pulled Merlin close. “Relax.”
Merlin leaned into Arthur for a moment but then stiffened. “We need to remove those books!”
“Which books?”
“The ones Gwaine brought!”
For once, Arthur didn’t argue. It was probably better that neither his father nor Merlin’s mother got an eyeful of what kinds of positions they were trying to enrich their sex life with. “Alright, I’ll put them in the bedroom.”
“Should we take the photo down?” Merlin stood in front of the couch and looked up at the black and white photography of them in what seemed to be an intimate moment that Percy had taken as a project for his art class.
“Merlin, we’ve been living together for five years now, one and a half of them as a couple. Father might not like the photo, but your mother knows that we’ve been together since you were seventeen.”
There wasn’t time to exchange the photo anyway as the doorbell rang to announce their first visitor.
Arthur went to open the door while Merlin quickly put the hoover away.
“Mam!” He entered the living room again and beamed widely. Hugging her, his gaze fell on something underneath the throw pillow on the couch. Desperately, he tried to give Arthur a sign by rolling his eyes and staring in the direction.
Behind Hunith’s back, Arthur mouthed “WHAT?” and shrugged.
As Hunith sat down and already inquired about their weekend, Merlin grabbed the tube of lube and tossed it in Arthur’s direction when he thought his mam wasn’t looking.
They definitely needed more time to parentproof their apartment the next time someone came over!